Primary elections – GEORGE ROTHERT

Voter Suppression Update: Marching Toward Plutocracy

Republicans accept as a truism that the fewer people voting, the better the outcome for the so-called Grand Old Party. So they proceed accordingly, ranting, without evidence, about rampant voter fraud, passing legislation making it more difficult to vote, devising radically partisan gerrymandering and even making those working on voter-registration drives subject to criminal penalties. (Click here for the latest from Tennessee.) And of course, doing noting to safeguard electronic voting equipment from foreign intrusion. We here in Oregon are smug, with our vote-by-mail that makes every vote verifiable with its paper ballot.

But now the GOP has a better idea. Why go to all the trouble of concocting schemes to make it harder for people to vote? Why not just do away with elections altogether? They are already doing just that in several states. Republicans have already cancelled 2020 primary elections in South Carolina, Nevada, Arizona and Kansas. The Republican National Committee, in collusion with the reelection campaign for the current president, decided they don’t need no stinkin’ elections. Too bad for Joe “You lie!” Walsh and Mark “Appalachian Trail” Sanford who have announced their intentions to challenge the current occupant of the White House for the Republican nomination.

Yes, the party can cancel primary elections. You can be assured they are hard at work on the ultimate voter suppression: how they can “postpone” the general election.

What’s a Hanging Chad, Anyhow?

There’s no question Republicans are doing all they can to suppress voting: the fewer votes cast, the better Republican chances. But that’s another story. We’re here to talk about your vote actually being counted.

Oregon elections are vote-by-mail. My ballot shows up in my mailbox. I complete it, sign it, put a stamp on the envelope and mail it back. In a day or two, I receive a text message or e-mail confirming my ballot has arrived at the election office. Later I receive another message telling me that my vote has been counted. Prior to repatriating back to Oregon, I voted by mail in California for twenty years.

Seventeen states have formally requested the Department of Homeland Security do risk assessments of their voting systems. With primary-election season here, DHS has so far completed nine. Homeland Security is also providing 33 state and 32 local election offices with cyber-scanning services to identify weaknesses in their networks. Collusion or not, there is no question that Russians infiltrated voting systems in the 2016 election; Russia attempted to hack into the election systems in 21 states. Two of those states — Alabama and Oklahoma — have not yet requested a DHS security review.

We’ve come a long way since the punch-card debacle of the 2000 election. Unfortunately, the “new” electronic voting equipment since then is now old and susceptible to malfunctions and breakdowns, not to mention hacking. Some of the manufacturers of voting machines have gone out of business. Direct-recording-electronic voting machines – DREs – make it easy to cast a ballot, but do not provide a paper record of voter choices. Even slot machines in gambling casinos keep better information.

Hacking is not just breaking into voting-system hardware. Precincts transmitting election data via Internet or even modem are also vulnerable.

Not cheered up enough yet? Click here to read more about it.

The Old Way?

Presidential candidate Donald Trump expressed outrage at the method used by Colorado Republicans to choose delegates to the party’s convention in Cleveland this summer. “Nobody should take delegates and claim victory unless they get those delegates with voters and voting,” Republican presidential front-runner railed. “It’s a crooked system. It’s a system that’s rigged. And we’re going to go back to the old way; it’s called, you vote and you win.”

Except that wasn’t the old way…

Continue reading “The Old Way?”